A Moment of Grief
by One Shot Gun Shot Loz
Summary: The first Christmas dinner at Hogwarts following the end of the Dark War, inspired by a gap at my own Christmas table. Now edited to comply with the Half Blood Prince cannon New and improved, one might say! One shot complete. Please review.


A/N: Please review- one shots need all the support they can get. There are 4 more on my Profile page, similarly dark involving everyone from James to Severus to Ron to Narcissa to Bellatrix. Please have a look.

A Moment of Grief

Filius Flitwick stood up on the pile of books that served as an extension to his chair. He gently cleared his throat, and surveyed those sat around him at the single table in the great hall, but they did not look up at once. Some were still his students, and yet they looked so old, he could not believe it. This Christmas was going to be their most cheerful and merry in almost five years- the Great War was finally over, all the prices had been paid. Now it was time to pick up the pieces and rebuild the world that they had known before Voldemort's second rising; a world becoming more accepting, a world moving forward to greater things. A world unafraid to speak the name of the Dark Lord. This is what the New Year held for Hogwarts, for the Ministry and for the magical world- decades of a suffocating stranglehold were at last at an end. They were free.

It was all that Filius could do to choke back a river of sorrow and regret.

In the moment he stood up and looked around the small table, he saw the remnants of the Order of the Phoenix, and he had been rattling himself to be positive and thankful for the Order members that dined with him today, but, as he knew he would, he couldn't see them. He couldn't see the people sat around the table for the gaps in between them; the massive chasms where should have sat more. The lack of chairs that in turn signalled a lack of bodies to fill them. He stared for only a second, but in that second he looked around the table and saw all that it was possible to see, between the seemingly huge gaps- omniscience is a perk of the job of Hogwarts headmaster, it would seem.

On his right sat an unusually subdued Sybil Trelawney. Her hugely magnified eyes hung low, and hey eyelids almost drooped shut. Her hands were folded strangely in her lap, and her back was arched in a way that made her look most uncomfortable. Had she been there, McGonagall would have made some remark about her dubious posture. Sybil had never really felt so…normal. She was sat here in her grief, much like everyone else, mourning a loss that could never be recouped. McGonagall was the one she missed the most- they had had strangely more in common than most would have thought. Their ages were not dissimilar, and they had been at Hogwarts a long time together. She couldn't help but wonder how much more empty the staff room would feel without the occasional "Really, Sybil!", She had only ever ventured down when she had to or when she felt like antagonising Minerva, but now she was more an omnipresent; Filius knew she feared the solitude of her tower and could not bear it for more than an hour or so. He feared that one day he would find that she had left her tower by a way other than the door.

To her right came Remus Lupin. No longer were his clothes ragged; war heroes are well paid. He wore a smart black robe with a white shirt underneath, but he looked older than Flitwick himself. His hair had completely greyed, his eyes had a distance which could not be measured and his face was covered in scars from battle and moon. No matter what clothes he had on, Remus would always wear the look of a man who has seen more than any one man should. The headmaster was sad to note that this boy he had taught and seen grow to manhood wore it well.

Then came the eponymous boy who lived through far too much. Beginning with Sirius, Harry had born the brunt of loss throughout the war- it had made him stronger, but much more withdrawn. He was able to hide his sorrow better than most who sat to dinner with him that lazy December afternoon, but that was precisely what he was being. Lazy. He had seen so many of the people he had only just come to love snatched away from him, he could no longer be bothered to face the grief, and chose instead to live in a world of make-believe, where he spoke of his friends and family in the present tense.

Next to him, very close to him, almost no gap between them, came a very clingy Hermione Granger. Another young soul who had been torn apart by this infuriating civil war, Flitwick thought. That's all it was to him, a stupid war. A stupid, stupid waste, and never was the waste so apparent as in Hermione. She had become, like Harry, dependent on her make-believe world of denial; she did not acknowledge that her parents had been tortured to death to get at her, she did not acknowledge that she had nowhere else to go other than Hogwarts, she spoke as if she and Ron were still blissfully in love. Not that much studying had been done, but Hermione's trademark logic and intelligence were replaced now by a semi-presence behind her eyes- she was no longer "all there" as some would crudely put it. But who at this table, in reality, was truly all there anymore? Many had not been for some years.

With the next four people sat at that table, Flitwick found his sorrow hardest to hide. Ginny, George, Molly and Charlie Weasly sat together, the remnants of one of the greatest wizarding families their time had known. Ginny and George sat in silence, while Charlie, with one arm wrapped tightly around her shoulders, whispered comforting words into his sobbing mother's ear, himself letting a few tears escape quietly. "Oh Molly," Flitwick wondered, "how ever will you stop crying?". She lost in one fell swoop her youngest and eldest sons, Ron and Bill, and then a week later, she lost Fred and Arthur in one of the last ambush attacks on the Order. However, the saddest of all was yet to come. Percy Weasly was held a Prisoner of War, but when the war was won and the prisoners freed, he was nowhere to be found. All that remained of him was a note, a note that Molly kept in her left breast pocket wherever she went. It was Percy's suicide note. Flitwick hadn't seen it, no one except the Weaslys had. In truth, he didn't want to see it. He was happy to assume, and never read the full horror of a son's pre-meditated attack on himself. All he could assume was that guilt had killed Percy, and though he had never meant it, his apology was now killing his mother.

The note had been given to Nymphadora Tonks, marked "To My Mother". The last thing Tonks had said to anyone was that the note MUST reach Molly. It was as if it was all she had hung on for, to carry out one last errand for the Order, for as soon as she gave the note over to Kingsley Shacklebolt, she collapsed into a tin pile of skin and bone on the floor of her cell, and one week later in St Mungos hospital, another gap was added to the table. Kingsley had not only been left without a family, but he had seen the last tragic moments of his protégé, the most promising Auror he had trained in years. It was his fault she had become an Auror, he had recruited her straight from Hogwarts. If only he hadn't pestered her not to take that job with Madam Malkin and come train at the Ministry, if only he had given up on her clumsy ways, if only he hadn't sent her on such a dangerous solo mission that he knew now ended in her capture, she would be alive. She would have been rejoicing with the rest of the magical world that Voldemort was gone. True enough, someone had to do that job, but why her? Why hadn't he gone himself? Why Nymphadora, and not him? Although he had seen her fly higher than ever she would have if she hadn't done all she did, he would be asking that question for the rest of his life.

And finally, Flitwick looked at his last companion, his new Deputy Headmaster, Severus Snape. Everyone else had looked elsewhere in his brief evaluation of their present state, but Severus was staring right at him, and he suspected that the Potions master had read every thought that had just run through his mind. Severus was probably a better man now, at the end of this war. He had lost everything many years ago, and as Albus Dumbledore had once confided in his diminutive charms master, Severus was the man he was for many horrific reasons, but the worst one of all, in Severus' own words, was that he had nothing left to lose. This would have made a lesser man reckless and suicidal, but Severus was not a lesser man. He had fought through his "wilderness years" as Albus had always called them- sad that he, the man who looked at Snape with more affection than anyone else his whole life, should not see him come out the other end of such a troubled time. But now he was not alone. Everyone else at this table had suffered a tremendous loss of at least one kind, and Severus was suddenly the leader in a field other than potions; he knew exactly how everyone felt, and to all their surprise, exactly what to say. He had joked with Remus, in one of their lighter moments, that he had always known that his years of wallowing in misery would one day be useful.

And they were. Severus made some shrewd observations of his own as he looked at Filius, looking at him. Flitwick had never wanted to be headmaster- he was happier than ever when teaching the myriad children that passed through these halls all manner of useful and useless charms. He didn't want Albus' job, but he was the only one who could take it. Severus was certainly not a candidate; an ex-deatheater in the present climate? The magical world may be rejoicing now, but believe me the howlers would start pouring in if he were to take on the role. And like Filius, he didn't want the job anyway. It was an admission. An admission that the great and good Albus Dumbledore had died. For different reasons, neither Flitwick nor Snape wanted to make that admission themselves.

Flitwick did not want to admit that Dumbledore was dead, like every one else. Snape did not want to admit he was the one who killed him. Everyone knew now why; they knew that Dumbledore had ordered it, they knew that Snape, their only spy in the Dark Lord's ranks, was hugely important to their victory. They would all have thrown their hands up in despair if they had been faced with the choice Severus and Albus had had to make, but with Albus trademark logic, although it was a colder logic than usual, he had made the correct decision. At least, that was what everyone else thought. Severus knew different. He remembered painfully Albus final confession of weakness, and it constantly bothered him. He hadn't quite believed it when he had heard it, because although he had had his suspicions, Albus was Albus. He was the father figure that had protected Severus from so much, and counselled him for all the things that he couldn't protect against. To hear the old man beg to be killed, because he was unable to go on anymore, was so very...surreal. Albus had been losing steam for many years; the exertion of breaking curses and being "the only one he ever feared" had broken him. Severus would have expected a noble speech commanding him to kill his mentor, and to feel no guilt for it was what was right. What he got instead was a plea to end the suffering of a very old and very ill man, who would not survive the war anyway. At the very moment when Severus thought he needed Albus most, he had been abandoned. For the one and only time in his life, Albus took the easy way out. He had come to be all Severus had had, and though he had been empty for many years, the stability of Albus' support had meant more to him than he had realised. He felt like he was mourning the death of an idea more than the man himself. Severus had always been angry at Dumbledore for being so bloody perfect, but now it was clear. It was they who had held him up to the pedestal, Albus never climbed up there himself. He had merely played along. He had not been so perfect after all.

He didn't tell anyone because he knew that this time was going to be the hardest ever, harder even than the war itself, because now they had to get on with their lives, and this thing, this petty detail, was just too irrelevant. Why add to their troubled thoughts with the fact that their mentor, now dead, was actually in his latter years not as strong as he once was, and his end was more cowardly than any of them had imagined? Either way, the great and good Albus Dumbledore was dead. Whether he died years ago, or in the final battle of the Dark War was a different question, but one best left unpondered.

As he reached this "convenient stop" in his thoughts, so Filius cleared his throat a second time. Between them they had thought up a book's worth of thoughts, but still, Filius had been stood no more than a minute. How time drags when you have so much to think about. Severus attention turned away from the mind of his new boss to his words, as Filius began his speech.

"Dear friends," he began, sounding every bit as unsure of himself as he felt "I would like to wish you all a Merry Christmas, and a joyous new year, but I'm afraid that is a little inappropriate. There are too many empty spaces between us for that. This will be our hardest year at Hogwarts for a very long time, because we have to learn to adapt to life without family and friends-" Molly gave a sob and Charlie tightened his grip on her shoulders "but it is still a life. What we have left to us is what these people have died to keep, and to do anything but treasure every moment of time we are given now is an insult to their memory. We have all changed, and we will all change again in the coming year I'm sure, but the most important thing is that we remember the good that has come from this tragedy; Voldemort is gone forever, and we have a lasting peace to live in, one where no one should be afraid to say his name, and where none should flinch when it is heard.

I've never been as good…as good as Albus at speaking, so it is perhaps ironic that I am left with the hardest speeches to give, but this one is going to remain short. All I ask, before we all spend our Christmases as we want is that we spare a moment to remember our heroes, and the sadness their death has brought to us. In this New Year, we must banish all such thoughts from our minds, and remember only the happiest times we had with them. They did not love you for your sad faces, they loved you for what you were everyday, and the greatest honour we can give them is to go on living as best we can, and in time to become ourselves once more, because I remind you again, that is what they have died for, the world and the people they loved to live as they loved them, happy and free. So now, I ask for a moment of silence, for each of us to think of what we have lost and what sorrow we have gained. A moment of grief that we might one day forget."

Never in all their lives had anyone at that table heard a silence scream so loud as they did then.

fin


End file.
